Wildlife activity timing in shrub-invaded and shrub-removed oak-hickory forest at Fish Lake Environmental Education Center (Eastern Michigan University; Lapeer County, Michigan, USA)

Wildlife activity timing reflects an individual animal’s need to balance
activities that improve fitness with timing that minimizes risk of
exposure to extreme climatic conditions, predation risk, and other threats
to survival and growth.  Habitat structure, such as the type or
amount of vegetative cover, can have a direct effect on the timing and
amount of wildlife activity and these habitat-mediated differences in
animal activity can translate to shifts in important species interactions
(e.g., predator-prey interactions, seed predation, and secondary seed
dispersal).  Invasive shrubs (e.g., Amur Honeysuckle, Autumn
Olive, and Common Buckthorn) significantly alter habitat structure and
directly affect overall activity and the timing of wildlife activity in
upper Midwest United States forests.  Here, we provide trail
camera data records of wildlife activity timing from fourteen 20 × 20m
oak-hickory forest plots located at the Fish Lake Environmental Education
Center (Lapeer, Michigan, USA); we mechanically removed and chemically
treated Autumn Olive and Amur’s Honeysuckle from seven of the plots and
seven plots remained as shrub-invaded reference plots.  Data were
recorded in two consecutive fall sessions (2019 & 2020), and one
Summer Session (2020); see methods for specific windows of camera
recording durations.  These animal activity data have multiple
uses that range from the synthesis of primary research to environmental
education. With specific focus on environmental education, these data are
particularly useful in exploring concepts in wildlife management (e.g.,
the influence of habitat structure on cervid activity), developing spatial
maps of activity using a local network of cameras, and exploring
management of time and date formatted data in statistical programs (e.g.,
R, JMP, Minitab, Excel) to efficiently summarize trends over time.